The question is "Why?"

Hello everyone! I realize that the longer I am here in Australia, the less and less I write because of the millions of things I am doing constantly while being here. I have a super busy schedule so i apologize if anyone gets annoyed with how long I wait in between posts to update. But in all honesty, I update more than most anyone else in my DTS :) SUCCESS! The last few weeks have been very interesting for me. I would like to say that I have been through a whole lot but in all honesty the only thing that has been on my heart and mind for the last few weeks is the question "why on earth am I here?" I know my reasoning for wanting to come here in the beginning but ever since being here I have come to realize that God actually had different plans for me but I just didn't know what those plans were yet. So while I am learning a TON of new things and God is giving many revelations about my life and my past and my future, I still have been so confused as to why God has me doing this DTS in Brisbane Australia. I keep asking things like "why am I here? What is my purpose? Why do I have times when Your voice is clear, God? Why do I go through silent periods like now? Why is my family going through stuff when I can't be there? Why am I sad? Why do I feel like I am not growing? Why is communication so hard? Why do You have me across the world? Why did I come with no money? How do i get the money I need? Will You get me to Malaysia? Why Australia now? Why, why, why, why, why...?" And it drives me CRAZY! And in these moments and in my doubts I have realized that I tend to hide them deep inside me so that no one knows i am struggling or so no one worries about me. I hide it so I can focus on making sure everyone else around me is okay...and while I know helping others is not a bad thing, holding everything that is hurting me inside IS a bad thing... I have not been trusting God 100% with my circumstances and I know that and I confess and repent of that. But that doesn't make it any easier. I don't like going through struggles because I don't want to be weak. I want to be strong for myself so I can be strong with others...but I am learning that being strong and bottling everything up inside are not the same thing and that is a hard process to work through. And because I allow myself to hold onto everything I then wind up breaking down completely on nights like tonight when out of no where God decides to answer my ultimate overall question of "why am I here?" Before I tell you what my revelation has been I would like to say sorry to everyone who reads my blogs. I definitely try to be as honest as I can with everyone on my blog but I also definitely try to not share all my struggles and while I don't think it is necessary to always give details of my struggles, I would like you to know that I won't try to hide that I have struggles anymore and I am going to try and NOT bottle things up inside. SO NOW! My revelation? Why am I here? Tonight God told me through another person that this DTS is not so I can become a better person or a stronger Christian. It is not so I can gain a lot of Christian knowledge. I am here on DTS because God wants to show me His heart and He wants to literally show me His love He has for me. I am His daughter and even when I feel like I don't need to be helped because I am the strong one and people around me need love, comfort, and protection more, God still sees me. He sees my real heart, me real fears, my tears, my pains, my hurts, my triumphs, my laughs, my joys, and my victories and He LOVES me! I AM a warrior for God and I want to be an even stronger warrior for God, but first and foremost, I am God's child. His beloved princess and I am here in Australia away from everyone I love and hold most dear so that there is NOTHING standing in between me and God's love and His heart for me. I hope you don't mind my openness. I felt lead to share this with my readers. Please keep me in your prayers and if you have encouragements, I would be honored to read them. I love you all so much and really appreciate everyone's love and support. Thank you for reading! Many blessings, Christianna.

Roller Coaster!!!!

I have been through SO much since my last blog update and I am sorry I have not updated for so long. It has been a roller coaster of activities and emotions! So I apologize if this blog turns out to be annoyingly long! Let's start with last week! Last week my MAD DTS school went to Bryon Beach which is about 2 hours away from where we live and we took part in the Red Frogs organization. The job of the Red Frogs is to go out everyday and night for 1 to 3 weeks to help out and take care of the schoolies. Schoolies, for those that don't know, are the youth in Australia that have just graduated and they all go out for a week together and just party. Every night. Getting drunk pretty much every single night. So, my school went and took part in Red Frogs and we spent the week taking care of these crazy drunk kids. It was such a crazy experience! For the week we all stayed and slept on a church floor in one room together and our schedule was as follows: Breakfast was at 8 and we had to be packed up every day and ready to go at 9am to go do pancake runs. For the pancake runs, schoolies would call in and request for red frogs to come to their apartments or hotels and make them pancakes for breakfast after their long night of partying. So after pancake runs we would then go have lunch with the rest of the 110 Red Frogs. After that we would have a few hours of free time and then we would go to dinner with the other Red Frogs at 5:30. Then we would have community meeting and then at 7:30pm all the different Red Frog teams would set out to start evangelizing and taking care of schoolies until 12:00am. That was our schedule for the whole week and it was EXHAUSTING! But God did amazing things! Aside form taking drunk, throwing up kids home and aside from taking kids to the hospital and having kids try and get you to drink, and aside from feeling violated numerous times, it was an amazing time because God was moving and He was protecting those kids SO MUCH! I was even able to pray with one girl one night about locating her lost phone and ID on the beach in the pitch black and 3 hours later she came running back up to me saying God answered my prayer because she had found it!!! The more the week went on, the more pumped up I got! I just wanted to serve these kids in Jesus' name and it was SO worth it!!! If you are ever given a chance to take part in something like Red Frogs, do it. You will never be the same after you have because God will show you SOOO much. So we came back to Mitchelton on Saturday and we had a relaxing weekend. Then this week began and out lecture topic for this week was Worship. I have been looking forward to this topic since I got here because I desperately want my life to be a life of worship and I want to know how to do it properly and in the most loving way to God. My entire view of what worship is has totally changed and God is revealing so much to me!!! Then on top of THAT, beginning at 7:00pm last night (Wednesday)we began a 24 hour day of worship. And ever since then we have had non-stop music and worship playing in our media centre!! It has been such a beautiful adventure. I stayed up and just worshiped God until 3:30am and then headed off to bed and when I woke up this morning I began worship immediately again and am still going! And the best part is, even though this 24 hours specifically has music playing non-stop, I am learning and truly experiencing the fact that worship is a lifestyle and you don't need to be surrounded by Christian music in order to be in constant worship. I want my life to really be all about worshiping God and that is what I will strive for all the time. Our 24 hours of "worship night" will end at 7:00pm tonight, but the real worship will actually never end. God is so good and SO worth praising constantly! And just to finish this update with an AMAZING praise report...I still need to pay my last tuition payment as well as over $2000 for my outreach payment and I have none of that money. Well, right before I went to lunch today I checked my mail box and found not only a beautiful letter from my big sissy that made me weep, but I found an envelope in my box with just my name on it with $300 inside. I don't know who it is from but it was just a gift and I am FREAKING out! God IS provider and He continues to blow my mind every day! I could not thank Him enough for this blessing! It's not everything I need but it is a big chunk. Have faith everyone. No matter what you are going through, God WILL provide for you. Thank you all SOOO much for your prayers and support! I love you all and can't wait to update you again! with many blessings,

Christianna!